Business Casual
by AKeeblerElf
Summary: Lexa Woods, the main POV, is a very savvy event coordinator specializing in protective measures to safeguard her clients. She works for a company that combines both physical and cyber security into one. But a change in management leads to an intentional encounter with Clarke Griffin, an equally savvy marketing specialist. The story recounts their relationship working together.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

* * *

A simple story of two girls can be so complicated.

From my perspective, I knew it was going to happen from all along, but a lot of my friends say it is hindsight bias. Regardless of the naysayers, I am going to tell you from the beginning how it all unfolded.

* * *

Some context, Octavia, Raven, Lincoln, and myself were all working at the same startup company—Arkadian. It was Octavia's brother's company—Bellamy, but he sold all his shares to some guy named Finn one day without letting us know and skipped out of town. Obviously, Octavia was livid, with Raven matching her anger. But let's be honest, Raven would get mad at most situations regardless of their severity on the company. But Lincoln and myself were pretty casual about the news. I blame it on the fact that our previous company—Grounder Co. hired and fired top level management quicker than a buttered bullet.

The day Finn introduced himself was the same day she came. So, here's the thing; Finn was an excellent manager/CEO, and one of the reasons for his success was his ability to identify his weaknesses and have someone else take over in that area. Hence, where Clarke Griffin came into the story. She was a top tier marketing genius; her ability to create new marketing campaigns and ads were way above our current competitor's abilities.

I guess I forgot to mention that we were, or still are, a tech company that focuses on cybersecurity and physical security. Bellamy liked to consider it an all-inclusive body guard system. Raven and Lincoln focus on the cybersecurity, while Octavia and I handle the physical aspects of the job. Even more specifically, Octavia hires and fires the bodyguards, while I make sure our clients, who are usually very important, do not enter a space that we do not fully understand. Essentially, Octavia is behind the brawns and I'm behind the brains of our side of the company.

Since our successful startup, we catered to wealthy celebrities and politicians, including people such as Theo Jaha, Marcus Kane, and even the cybercelebrities like Monty Green and Jasper Jordan. Not that I'm name dropping or anything. Despite that success, Bellamy's end goal was to protect people as high up as our president. However, our company lacked something that none of us were good at—thinking outside of the box to better promote our brand. It wasn't until Finn bought out Bellamy (10.3 million dollars) to become the majority shareholder (only 10% larger than Octavia) that our weakest link would lead to my greatest success.

* * *

On Oct. 21, 2023, Finn Collins, former CEO of brands such as Founders Inc., NetGain Inc., and even Mountaineous Co. walked into our tiny meeting room to introduce himself.

"Hello all, I'm grateful that all shareholders could meet on such short notice. As you are already aware of, I am the new CEO of this company. My name is Finn Collins and I look forward to working with all of you on making this company even better than it was yesterday," Finn explained.

He was wearing a very nice dark navy pinstripe suit that made the rest of us look like low level chumps. His tone matched his suit nicely, however, it did not leave a belittling feeling. He continued to ramble on about how excited he was for this change in management and explained in boring detail what an impact we all can make if we have the right mindset. At some point our secretary knocked on the meeting rooms door to inform Finn that someone had arrived. After he excitedly told her to let her in he turned back to us, "one of my weaknesses is in marketing. And I'm acutely aware that none of you have marketing backgrounds that will set us apart from the competition," he said as Raven shifted in her chair in a way that only we knew meant she was very offended, "So, I would like to introduce to you Clark Griffin. Our new marketing head," he finished right as a blond girl was ushered into the room.

Quickly glancing her over, she seemed fairly average. Blond, about 5'6", fairly fit, and had a much more casual dress-code to her than Finn. She wore a loose fitting white top, navy slacks, with her coat draped over her left arm. Seeing her smile was the first moment I truly noticed her. It was then that I noticed just how blue her eyes were. "Hello all, my name is Clarke Griffin and I have over six years of experience in marketing for major companies. I plan on working closely with you all in hopes to better understand you all, the product we're selling, and the company as a whole. I look forward to getting to know every one of you better and watching you all continue to produce amazing work here," she intentionally looked everyone directly in the eyes when speaking.

Her eyes were sharp with knowledge and professionalism, but her smile was warm enough to melt an ice cube. A combination I had only seen once before. After she spoke a bit more about the specifics of her marketing background and the direction she would like to take the company, she sat down in a chair next to Raven to let Finn finish the meeting. Once it had wrapped up, it was lunch time and the four of us decided to take a mental break and went down a small dinner on the corner of the street. Raven was the first one to speak on the matter, "Can you believe Bellamy just up and walked out on us without telling us about this Finn guy? I mean, he just left us up and dry and went off on an extended holiday to whocares where!" she exclaimed while sliding into a booth at the back of the diner.

Octavia, feeding into the frustration and sliding to sit next to Raven, blinked hard and let out a sign before opening her eyes, "I have no idea what he was thinking. This Finn guy is nice and all, but he doesn't have the background to run a company like ours. He has dealt with mostly finance firms or webdomain property companies."

"I doubt he even knows the difference between the deep and dark web," Lincoln chided casually, "but regardless, change is usually a good thing. Especially since we had been seeing declines in our company value for the past three months," he shrugged.

The waiter came up to take our drink order before anyone else could jump into the conversation, and just as she left Octavia's eyes rose towards the door. Prompting all our eyes to follow only to find the blond walking into the diner alone. Octavia, usually disgruntled around new people ignored her at first. It wasn't until Lincoln waved politely did the blond notice us. He waved her over, got out of the booth, and told her to join us. Because I was sitting in the sit next to the wall I didn't bother to get up and just waited for her to decide to join us or not. Her face scanned ours quickly, "thank you but I'm just getting an order to go and heading back to the office to get back to unpacking my stuff into my office," she smiled warmly at us again.

It was definitely something about her smile.

"Okay, well, if you change your mind we'll be here for the next hour," Lincoln said casually sliding back into the seat next to me.

She walked over to the counter and proceeded to greet one of the staff. I swiveled back to face Raven, who was thumbing through her phone. "She's a blessing in disguise at least. It seems as though any company she's ever marketed for has gained leaps and bounds more profit due to her creativity. She definitely knows how to work adobe photoshop," Raven turned her phone to showcase a very simplistic yet alluring ad promoting the newest cell phone.

After each of us had our chance to inspect the ad, Octavia looked back at the figure of the girl approvingly. "At least she'll known what she's doing," she said right before our waiter came back to get our orders.

* * *

 **Author note** : So, I'm really bad at finishing stories. But I had some creative juice in me to write this. Regardless, lemme know what you think!


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

* * *

A couple weeks had passed by with Finn introducing a new concept to the company once every other day. Raven and Octavia, who were very strong headed and wanted the company to remain the same, challenged Finn every step of the way. Despite their opposition, new product pricing and extensions to our sales pitch were added. But the moment Finn started to question the vision and mission statement was the true moment of emotion peak that caused Octavia to call an impromptu meeting with ourselves and Indra, our lovely secretary.

"This guy has got to go," Octavia said sternly while pacing back and forth in the tiny meeting room.

The rest of us were just sitting down as Raven closed the blinds to the windows. But we knew Finn wouldn't be around much, so the fear of having him catch the beginning of this rebellion was more out of precaution. Now, I want to take a second to add my true opinion to this meeting. I did agree with Octavia in the fact that Finn didn't have the background to run our company, but I don't think he had the background to run majority of the companies he worked for previously. And other than the most recent disastrous investment of working with Grounders Co. (Lincoln and I had left that company by that point), he usually left his companies better than when he started. Regardless of his success, Bellamy was a pretty smart guy who poured hours of calculated thought into both the company's mission and vision statements. So, for Finn to come in and suggest they might need to be upgraded seems to be in poor taste. Which, at that time, did set off a little red flag in my mind. But per usual, I ignored it.

"I think we need to get Bellamy back," Raven said, looking from us to Octavia as she took her seat, "Finn wants to take out one of the core things in our mission statement, which is to protect free speech and privacy. With that changing, ultimately he'd be able to amend our terms of service contract. And that's something that would completely alter how and who we do business with. Jaha is a very important client of ours. He's really the reason we're on the radar period," she slicked back her hair, resting her hands near the base of her ponytail.

"Yeah, but Jaha is also one of our most controversial clients. So, perhaps losing his business isn't such a bad thing," Lincoln shrugged.

He also plays the devil's advocate in these situations. Even though his point is valid. It was due to Jaha that our name got out there. But now that we have more publically popular clientele, losing Jaha wouldn't hurt our figures as much as it would have a year or two ago. On the other hand, Raven's point is still more concerning because the potential change in our terms of service allows for a lot more wiggle room to take advantage of the privacy of our clients. And that would probably cause a lot of irreversible damage.

Raven and Lincoln continued to challenge one another's view, and it wasn't until Octavia sharply looked at Indra did they stop. Her eyes narrowed on Indra's, "Weren't you still working for Grounder Co. when Finn was there?"

"Yes. I was," Indra said calmly.

"What was he like?" Octavia pursued.

"He was about the same as he is now. Came in and started proposing a lot of changes. I never trusted him," Indra narrowed her eyes and leaned forward, "I don't trust Clarke either. Just like the company before, he brought in someone with him who manipulated the coworkers into changing the culture to favor him when he proposed new ideas. His ideas were what lead to the failure of Grounders Co."

Like a circuit judge making up her mind in court, she turned to me and said, "Lexa. You use to be an interrogator for Groudners Co., why don't you infiltrate this Clarke Griffin girl to figure out what she knows and then eventually get to know Finn better. Once we know what he's really up to we'll use it against him to get him to sell his shares to us and put the company back in order."

I loved my old job at Grounders Co. Psychoanalyzing people was a specialty of mine. But in that same moment I remembered the reason I quit. I shook my head and quickly agreed to do my best because Octavia was an important person to me. And everyone in the room knew the second Octavia put a target on someone's back, there was no stopping her from getting the information she wanted.

* * *

A couple days after the meeting I was sitting at my desk when I saw Clarke walking up to Lincoln. They were out of eyeshot, but from their lip movement and hand gestures they were exchanging pleasantries. Someone brought up getting lunch together and off they went. Shortly after Raven pulled up a chair to plop down next to me, "what do you think that's about?"

I shrugged, anticipating the next question, "What do you think Octavia will think of Lincoln going off with Clarke?" Raven continued.

And just like that, soft footsteps sped towards us, "Um. Can someone explain to me why Lincoln and Clarke just left together?" Octavia's question was less inquisitive as it was sharp and judgmental.

Again, I shrugged. Raven looked up at her and blandly said "I bet they're going off to have an office affair."

The comment, obviously a jest, still rose some red pigments from Octavia's face. Her quick inhale and clenched fists were the consequence of her office romance for Lincoln. Due to her brother's disapproval, she kept everything on the low. Meeting with Lincoln occasionally on Sundays, but if you looked at her snapchat top friend, Instagram DMs, and who's constantly the first text message recipient you would know things were more serious. I guess she was still in denial of their attraction, even after Bellamy is long gone. Mentally shrugging, I swiveled back to my computer to get back to work on the newest clientele's information.

* * *

About fifty-two minutes later Clarke and Lincoln came back up the stairs laughing and in a clearly more intimate relationship. Maybe Raven wasn't too far off the mark. Regardless, I swiveled my chair to look back towards Octavia's desk and I knew that she was so engrossed in her work to distract herself from the unlikely reality that Clarke might have stolen her unrealized true love.

"Told you. She's not to be trusted," Indra muttered as she passed my desk to drop off some papers at Raven's desk.

My eyes tracked Indra to Raven, where I read her lips saying the same thing. Moving from Indra back to Lincoln and Clarke, who were now parting ways so Lincoln could get back to work, my eyes followed Clarke's walk towards her small office room. It was actually the only office with a door. We're all very close, and Bellamy wanted us to communicate more openly, so no one occupied that office. But when she joined our team Finn insisted she got her own room, so we cleared out that office for her. Lost in thought, I guess I stared at her the whole way there because she eventually noticed my gaze. At first she slowed down, almost as though to speak to me. But it appears she changed her mind and just smiled and waved before she disappeared into her room. That smile.

Before I even realized, I was leaning against the door frame of Clarke's office. Her desk was facing the only window which would normally leave her back to the door. But she was curled up in her work chair hunched over a notebook. Out of her peripherals, she noticed me and turned up to look at me, "Oh. Hey. Lexa? Right?"

A nod.

"What's up? Do you need something?" She asked slowly but not hesitantly.

It was almost as though she knew I was going to walk up to her door. See, here's the thing: my old job, and a lot of the job I still hold today requires me to be three to four steps ahead of other people. Very rarely do I feel like an action of mine is what someone else expected or planned to happen. So, to have the feeling of Clarke Griffin anticipating me to do something that I was not even fully aware that I was doing rubbed me in all the wrong directions. As taught to me in my previous trainings, if you're not comfortable about situation—you leave. But not before I noticed how blue her eyes were today. I turned around and went back to my desk half-focused on work, half-confused about what just happened.

* * *

 **Author Note:** Well, the juice is still flowing. But Imma be 100% honest, this is coming off the top of my head as I type. It's almost like playing DDR when the notes become visible halfway down the screen and you have to react very quickly too it... My point = there might be some things that contradict themselves or weren't mentioned earlier. Regardless, hope you enjoyed. Review it to let me know.


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